Synopsis

The Fixx perform "Stand or Fall" amid a stark, dreamlike wartime tableau. Cy Curnin wanders through an English manor, singing in isolation while images of soldiers, battlefield movement, and a Sherman tank interrupt the housebound scenes. The video gradually shifts from fear and destruction toward a more symbolic finale, as Curnin appears alongside the troops and tank with a white horse. Its visual contrast gives the song's themes of conflict, survival, and moral choice a cinematic scale.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made for the Fixx's 1982 debut album, "Shuttered Room," and helped establish the band as an early MTV staple.

• British television initially banned the video because censors objected to footage in which the white horse appears to collapse. The horse is later shown alive, but that did not prevent the controversy.

• The battlefield footage includes Sherman tanks firing on a Sussex beach. The tanks attracted less concern from British censors than the horse sequence.

• The Fixx were closely involved in shaping their early videos. Cy Curnin said the band did not want conventional footage of themselves simply playing their instruments, favoring more constructed visual concepts.

• "Stand or Fall" became the Fixx's first charting hit, reaching the Top 10 of the US rock chart and entering the Billboard Hot 100.